Rating: 8.2

Country: UK

Release Date: 2007

Record Label: Candlelight Records

Track list:
1. The Difference Engine
2. Eyeballing
3. Outside
4. Mirror Image Ritual
5. Made of Beasts
6. Gangrene. Purulence. Impact.
7. A Wound that Never Heals
8. New Quest
9. This has Nothing to Do with Apathy

Total Playing Time: 41:00

Band Website: Dam

Dam - The Difference Engine

Nathanael Underwood - Guitar, Vocals
Daniel Rumbol - Bass
Jaime Gomez - Drums

Unexpectedly Dam's second album kicks off in a black metal fashion before a submerged droning dirge bolsters an elegant malevolent rumbling dark melody. Blackened and growling vocals join the acrimonious spitting one normally associates with them. The undulating and infectious "Possessed, it speaks" section announces their distinctiveness together with intricate cymbal exertions that would make Gene Hoglan grin. After some aloof twisted scales and sly warm discord, "Eyeballing" contains the album's most opulent moment; an epic, weighty and stunning layering of guitars where the sum is far greater than the parts. "Outside" has a little more in common with the debut album, with its waltzing At The Gates and precision Carcass groove. However, the long mutating riffs, thunderous sludgy breakdown and freaky reverb are rarer.

I've yet to hear Dam play the fourth track live (but it is early days yet) and can just imagine drunken moshers intentionally shouting for "Mirror Signal Manoeuvre". It just so happens that this track is one of the best songs I've heard in 2007. The absolutely gleaming prologue so truthfully exemplifies post-Human era Death that it caused me to get emotional about how long the world has been missing Chuck Schuldiner (I can imagine Illogicist seething with envy here). The bass chatters more stridently and the drumming is considerably more technical and off-beat to match the non-linearity. The tasty harmonised chugging is reminiscent of Loudblast's Sublime Dementia and the doubled haunted clean singing has Akercocke parallels. The use of the compound minor third interval gives a spacious and intimidating attack before an asymmetric epilogue that is a misshapen and languid cohort of the prologue.

Perhaps Dam let things slacken structurally a little for the rest of the album, but this is due to a worthy attempt to create songs with their own identity. The violent basic energy release "Made of Beasts" is notable chiefly for its wide vocal variation. The sixth track has a definitive Gorguts Considered Dead feel and a vivid creamy solo. Such a shame that the innovate string scrape harmonics are too diffuse to be effective. The colourful and eccentric seventh track starts like Iron Maiden's "Flash of the Blade", has the line "Bible-bashing cartoonists" delivered with unrivalled rancour over mournful echoing horn-like guitar and initiates palpitations with the titanic blasting spasm preceding refined arpeggios that alternate between diatonic and (Testament-like) diminished scales. But bizarrely it works. The undynamic "New Quest" is rather surplus to requirements but the final track is yet another surprise. An expression of awareness of one's own fallibility using a doomy chord-driven palette. The raw-edged sorrowful singing is rather potent and makes for a moving album closer.

Dam have improved in every department since their debut. The Difference Engine is more focused (complete with complementary and highly accomplished desolate ruins artwork), the mixing is more consistent across the tracks, the vocals accentuate key words with greater emotion and most importantly, they are 100% their own band and no longer merely an interesting hybrid of classic death from the UK, USA and Sweden. They still have their humid gloomy sound however, so much of the detail could be missed by anyone without hyper-alert ears (in fact, some of the harmonies, samples and picking attack border on the subliminal). Dam have got multifaceted rather quickly and their sound needs to evolve with them if they want a fan-base beyond patient procrastinators; everyone deserves of piece of this important UK band. I'm proud to know them and so sure am I that they will make a difference that I suspect the album will sell itself irrespective of what is written here.

October 5th, 2007